Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Insults to the Intersex Community on TV

On TV lately there has been a rash of insults directed at
intersex people. The first such insult
was on the political commentary show Fox and Friends. One episode was commenting on Facebook
expanding their gender options. The cohost
of the show Clayton Morris, clearly not knowing what intersex is, joked that he
changed his Facebook gender to intersex.
Later one of the host joked saying one of the options was “intersex,
whatever that is.” This prompted a
letter from Inter/Act condemning these comments.

Due to this outcry Fox made a short on air apology to the intersex
community. Frankly it was a rare moment
of acceptance on gender issues for Fox News.
I can accept that apology because these comments obviously came from a
place of ignorance. That does not excuse
insulting people though. If you do not
know what something is, look it up before you open your mouth. Hopefully Fox learned their lesson and will
strive to do better in the future.

The more heinous insult was from the show New Normal. On the episode Goldie Rush the character
named Gary complains about all the losers he dated in the past. Then there is a flashback montage to all of
these alleged losers. One of them says
they are intersex. That’s barely even a
joke, just an insinuation that intersex people are losers and not dating
material. There was some outcry about
this on online forums, but no apology was ever made.

This I cannot accept.
They are picking on the intersex community just because we are small so
there will be very little backlash. This
is not funny, it’s bullying. Shame on
the New Normal and it’s director Ryan Murphy for allowing this. As a gay man he should know better than to
insult sexual minorities. Thankfully the
show only lasted one season.

I hope that these incidences will teach the mainstream
culture that insulting intersex people is not acceptable and will not be
tolerated. We are a natural variation of
humanity, not freaks to be mocked. I
also hope that anyone who overhears an insult towards intersex people will make
a stand and educate the joker. Knowledge
is the best weapon against ignorance.